Saturday, April 21, 2018

The following is previously unseen rehearsal footage of Prince & The Revolution from the summer of 1984.

It was in this very room at Flying Cloud Drive Warehouse in Eden Prairie, Minnesota that Prince created and committed to tape one of his most beloved and iconic compositions, which six years later would become a worldwide hit for Sinead O’Connor.

Prince’s original studio version of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ is presented here for the first time.

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I think, if you wanna try Lamar, you should go with either of his previous albums first. Good Kid is more approachable and To Pimp more adventurous. That said, Damn left me where I always am with Lamar: he's really, really talented; he's not for me. I'd never change the station if he came on, but I don't seek him out.

For that matter, I think that if rap/hip-hop aren't a regular part of your listening diet, Lamar isn't where you start.

This is maybe OTP even for this thread, but I'd like to let our thread poster know that my fantasy baseball team is titled "Josh Reddick! Josh him!" and no one has the slightest idea why I think it's funny. And I'll never tell.

I think that could be translated into terms Shakespeare would have been familiar with (a code of violence, a fear of being feminized, overreaching as a value). Edmund or Iago would have understood that. They are great villains. But I don't really appreciate it as a free-floating sentiment.

I have no opinion on album or recording artiste, but it's the Pulitzers copying Dylan's Nobel and a pretty sad attempt to still be relevant to the larger culture.

Quite possibly, though in each case we'll have to see if the prize is permanently broadened to include new types of work. I think this is more likely in the case of the Music Pulitzer. The books and journalism they honor are typically widely read (even the poets are likely to be known by general readers who are into poetry, like Frank Bidart this year). But the music has been a narrow academic award for most of its existence. Maybe it'll become a more influential award for stuff in various genres that is critically interesting.

I don't think I knew that there was a Pulitzer Prize for music. Looking at the past winners, there are very few I recognize, because I know nothing about classical music, contemporary or otherwise. The few names I do recognize were awarded decades after their period of influence, which makes it like the Grammy, appropriately enough.

I dislike all such awards as a rule, taken by the public as a judgement of quality when they're mostly just another political race for votes. I do see the value for the recipient or insider when they recognize people who are first-rate and relatively unknown to the public.

Lamar makes little sense on any of those scores. Maybe there are sound arguments to be made, but the obvious point again seems publicity for an award that means less and less.

I suppose you could argue renewed relevance of the award could help those lower on the popularity scales.

I was looking at the list of Pulitzer Prize in Music winners, and yeah, that's some heavy ####. I noticed that Wadada Leo Smith's Ten Freedom Summers was a finalist, and man, I love that set. Wiki Article. Not easy to get to for people not already receptive to that kind of music, but the detail and committed playing is something to hear.

I posted this next link on the politics thread, but no takers. I'll try it here.

Wadada Leo Smith was born in Mississippi, and lived there (I believe) through his entire youth. This is his tribute to Emmett Till. Wadada gets in a canoe, and drifts down the river where Emmett's body was dumped after his murder. It's not an elegy though, it's a reawakening. The video is shot in 360 degrees, so as Smith floats, his trumpet penetrating the quiet, lazy river surroundings, you can pan around, look at the trees and the banks, or Wadada if you want. I think it's spectacular. The playing is not challenging like avant-garde jazz often is, if you're skeptical of the whole free jazz thing, don't be put off, Wadada has virtuoso technique and the fact that it's just him playing solo means there's a clarity and spaciousness to the whole proceedings.

Do yourself a favour and crank up the quality on this. Not being a tech guy, I have no idea how taxing a 360 degree video/audio stream is, but it benefits greatly from the boosted quality.

How excited should i be for the Primus/Mastodon twin headlining show I will be attending this summer?

I was thinking of getting tickets for that show, just because All Them Witches will be the opening act (though I like Primus well enough, or did, I don't think I've heard anything they've put out since the Brown album).

Took a weekend trip to Philly this last weekend. First time really every fully exploring touristy side of Philly despite the fact that I lived there 4 for 7 years. Lived there from 1997 to 2003 and the city has changed in a lot of ways and has not changed in a lot of ways. I went back briefly about 6 years ago but it was on task force so I stayed mostly in the hotel.

Anyway the city has definitely cleaned itself up a great deal as compared to when I lived there but it looks like they are a bit short on money in that a lot of things look half completed and or not tend to. It is also shocking to see relatively new high density dwellings in areas that were rowhomes. They kind of stick out like sore thumbs. It was also interesting to walk around neighborhoods that you wouldn't dream of walking around in 15 years earlier but at the same time there were neighborhoods that didn't seem like they had changed at all. Notably Chinatown and the Italian Market area. The Museum of Art is still outstanding and one of the best art museums that you can go to in the world. The food was still kind of meh though there does appear much more offerings than there were back in the day. Walked by the infamous Starbucks and everything looked normal and calm except for a police van parked across the street. The next day apparently there was a protest there but we were in a different part of the city when it was going on.

The homeless are still there in great numbers though they appear to be a lot nicer than the Baltimore homeless. It was possibly because of 4/20 but all weekend long the smell of marijuana was everywhere. In the old days I used to only encounter that on South St but this time it was in all the neighborhoods. Speaking of South St. I saw that it was getting gentrified a great deal. Amusing to see an Acme and Whole Foods along with a wine and painting shop alongside hookah bars, vape shops, and sex shops.

My GF actually enjoyed the visit and wants to go back as she feels there was more to see in the city. She felt we could have used one more day in the city so we'll probably train up or down whenever we're in NYC or DC next.

But they put on a hell of a show live (or did at one of the first few Lolla's) and Mastadon is a force of nature live.

So, I should be very excited, which I am. :-) I have seen Primus a couple of times, and, both times the sound was poor. First one was so quiet that my friend and I could stand there and talk to each other without having to yell. Second was last year at Rock on the Range, and the sound in the main stadium was terrible (unless you happened to be down on the field up front, which i wasn't). We are going to be down on the floor in front for this one. Can't wait. Looking forward to both bands.

Thanks for posting the Wadada Leo Smith video, Greg. That is quite a video feat as well as a lovely recording.

I think that one of the changes in the Pulitzer music prize process is that starting this year, nominees can just submit a recording. Before, it's always been a score. But the requirement for a score is difficult to meet for a lot of unconventional music, and even academic music these days consists at times as much of computer code as it does notes on staff paper. A piece like Smith's can clearly be written down as an instrumental line easily enough (whether it's written down before or after composition), but a rap album is harder to conceive of as a conventional arrangement. I mean, it can be done, with lots of explanatory text, but what's the point? It's not like some other artist is going to try to play it the same way as it was scored.

Although anybody interested might want to check and see if I just fabulated all of that :) I do remember reading about it, though.

At this point the politics stuff is an absolute trainwreck with trolls playing with trolls. If you're going to get into an argument about something at least get into an argument about the best way to cook a brisket!

TV question, since no one was interested in Ready Player One... I used to watch the Walking Dead, it was only "good" for a couple seasons, then only had sporadic good episodes, and haven't watched it for awhile. I saw that the Morgan character, one of the actually interesting ones, moved over to the spinoff. Anyone watched that, and is it worth taking a look, or is it more of the same?

And is Westworld worth devoting some time to? Yes, I liked the original movie.

I've been very loyal to The Walking Dead comic, still reading every trade volume as it appears. The show, as noted, was good enough at the start, but I lost interest in keeping up with both. The basic idea of the comic – a story that will never end and will continually spiral outward into larger realms and casts of characters – is fascinating, if sometimes bewildering. It still packs some punches, because it has carte blanche to imagine new kinds of survivors who begin to meet one another, years after the initial "plague."

Interesting that you thought TWD was good for a couple of seasons. Like the comics it was a great concept horribly executed. I'm a sucker for zombie flicks but I got exhausted from the redundancy and inaction of the comics and show. Forced myself to watch the last season that I watched (the one with the cliffhanger of Glenn's death) and haven't been back since. Never could get around to watching Fear and I haven't really had time to start watching all the other shows. Enjoyed American Gods but I don't really think that enjoyment can continue as the mystery and enigma of the early shows has worn off as more and more has been revealed. Plus they changed showrunners.

With all the flying I've done recently I'v reread a few Pratchett novels, specifically the witches themed books. Still quite enjoyable even though I've read them three or four times now. Just read the first two Tiffany Aching's novels and will be picking up the third one tonight. Very very sad that he died. His books always seemed fresh, interesting, funny, and tugged at your heart when it needed to.

As for Ready Player One, I talked about it earlier but Spielberg missed the mark by casting attractive people to be the main characters. Outside of that I can't say much as I haven't seen the movie.

The basic idea of the comic – a story that will never end and will continually spiral outward into larger realms and casts of characters – is fascinating, if sometimes bewildering.

That may be its intent now but that, I think, was created to keep it a cash cow. The original intent, IMO, was a very nihilistic/pessimistic view heroes/society. The first 100 odds issues was all about stamping out hope. If even an ounce of happiness or hope was allowed to be shown on the pages you knew that it would end in very horribly very shortly. Those first 100 or so issues, which took years to roll out, were not about meeting all kinds of different people but a showcase in misery porn.

TWD is really just General Hospital with Zombies. It's a soap opera with gore.

I can definitely see that with the show and it is a shame. I think there is a lot of potential in a show about survivors of a zombie outbreak but Hollywood has never really been interested in doing that show. In a way I get it. In the old days "zombies" were symbols so the idea of showing realistic human interactions would be quite silly but now that zombie storylines are common you would think someone would try to take it that route. You'd think someone would go the "A Quiet Place" route with Zombies.

I don't know if lyrics are my thing or not. Lyrics are more likely to make me feel deeply. But I like a lot of bands that sound good and have forgettable lyrics. Right now I'm listening to L'Histoire de Melody Nelson. I suppose that's revealed preference?

As to the thread, I'm a little conflicted as to where to go to discuss Dilbert cartoons.

Interesting that you thought TWD was good for a couple of seasons. Like the comics it was a great concept horribly executed.

Missed out on the comics. The first couple of years of the show had the main gang going to the CDC to try to find out what was going on, and then trying to establish a community (first at the farm, then at the prison). This was then repeated ad nauseum over the next N years, with situations being set up only to be torn down by stupid and inconsistent-to-character behavior by all sides, increasingly unbelievable use of tech (gasoline, still? Really?), unlikable protagonists, and flip-floppy "science" regarding the zombies. Eps that dealt with character motivation and side experiences outside of the sweeping arcs could be worth it, but not worth wading through the grindingly slow pace of the predictable big bads.

Concepts flailing out is endemic. Revolution, Fast Forward, Blacklist - cool ideas, that flounder away. That's one reason the Good Place has been a refreshing watch - first, it's light, but also it keeps tearing down its own paradigms. And as a bonus, all the metaphysical stuff is actually reasonable...

I'm going to see Alvvays this weekend (w/ Big Thief). I have a perpetual thing for Alt-poppy rock led by females. Later this summer Sunflower Bean comes to town and will satisfy the fetish as well. I love their sound. (I hear a ton of Fleetwood Mac influence, to go with the bit of Glam and Folk.)

This is maybe OTP even for this thread, but I'd like to let our thread poster know that my fantasy baseball team is titled "Josh Reddick! Josh him!" and no one has the slightest idea why I think it's funny. And I'll never tell.

I think that one of the changes in the Pulitzer music prize process is that starting this year, nominees can just submit a recording. Before, it's always been a score. But the requirement for a score is difficult to meet for a lot of unconventional music, and even academic music these days consists at times as much of computer code as it does notes on staff paper. A piece like Smith's can clearly be written down as an instrumental line easily enough (whether it's written down before or after composition)

That's interesting. I wonder if they would have accepted Smith's scores as written. Probably, eh?

I hated Ready Player One the book. Hated it. It had enough propulsion that I finished it (albeit with a lot of very aggressive skipping), but it made me feel nothing but grim disgust for humanity. Which, maybe that's ultimately the point. But it sure wasn't an enjoyable experience. Not going to see the movie, for obvious reasons.

Agreed on Kendrick as 'great but just not my jam.' I don't enjoy his music, but I'm very happy that it exists. I'm not sure what the analog would be in rock. Maybe Radiohead--an artist that isn't actually that accessible to those who aren't already steeped in the genre--a genre that's been around long enough at this point to just be taken for granted--but whose talent can't be ignored.

My favorite album of 2018 so far is probably First Aid Kit? And it might be my least favorite of their records so far. Feels like it's been a bit of a down year overall. I like the Musgraves record, though I don't love it. The Hayley Kiyoko record is fun, but has more than a few misses. As soon as the new Grouper record is released, it'll probably be my #1 for the year. I will never not love anything from Liz Harris.

Ready Player One is Twilight for boys. It's poorly written fan fic. It's a HORRIBLE novel. Not because of any narrative reasons or due to the hazards of nostalgia run amok, but because the guy simply can't write.

I don't really see how it could bring out that much negative emotion or that much hate in terms of how it was written. It is largely forgettable and his follow up book is largely forgettable as well but I thought it was a pleasant enough read. I think he took himself and his material a little too seriously but that it was mostly harmless.

A writer for Pajiba, a site I'm generally not in agreement with, described the book as a tribute to gamerz written during a time that they were revered and not reviled. So it doesn't age well in that regard.

I'm going to see Alvvays this weekend (w/ Big Thief). I have a perpetual thing for Alt-poppy rock led by females. Later this summer Sunflower Bean comes to town and will satisfy the fetish as well. I love their sound. (I hear a ton of Fleetwood Mac influence, to go with the bit of Glam and Folk.)

I've pretty much lost touch with a lot of Western rock, but I like both of those acts.

(Deep breath). If you like alt pop/rock led by females, are you familiar with chatmonchy?

I just listened to The Lion's Roar because Ben Lindbergh put "This Old Routine" on Effectively Wild and I thought it was beautiful. I am now ready to plow through the rest of their discography. I swear I listen to that podcast for the music as much as for the baseball :)

I enjoyed the book Ready Player One but I didn't think it was very good. The references felt a bit like some of the passages in American Psycho, except not as well-written; there are some questionable decisions regarding race and gender; and the premise is ludicrous.

I expect it will be a fun movie to watch once if you're a white dude from my generation, but I'm not racing out to see it.

t's a HORRIBLE novel. Not because of any narrative reasons or due to the hazards of nostalgia run amok, but because the guy simply can't write

That was how I felt about The Martian, which also seems to have been destined to be a movie idea (and wasn't a bad movie of its type). The book should have been at least readable but wasn't.

I found The Martian better than, say, The Da Vinci Code, because while the author didn't know how to write, he also clearly knew that he didn't know how to write, and he more or less stripped the narrative down to the stuff he was good at.

I worry about Ready Player One. I think I've reached my limit of being obviously pandered to. At this point you have to be subtle enough that I can delude myself into thinking I'm not being pandered to...and this movie does not look like it does that.

and he more or less stripped the narrative down to the stuff he was good at

This reminds me a lot of Dances With Wolves. I saw the movie, and thought I'd read the book. A couple chapters in I thought "this is just the novelization of the screenplay", but it turned out it was the novel. The book added absolutely no insight or detail. The Martian did. A little. Agreed that the Da Vinci Code did not.

Would be interested in hearing recommendations on another pulp genre - the PI. I've liked most of the Robert Crais novels, and most of the Michael Connellys. Harlen Coben is hit or miss, the plots tend to be kinda simple. I re-read old Travis McGee books every once in awhile. Robert Parker lost his way on Spenser, but Jesse Stone was promising until he (Parker) died and his replacements blew it. Anything people would think I'd like based on that limited info, suggest away.

This reminds me a lot of Dances With Wolves. I saw the movie, and thought I'd read the book. A couple chapters in

I did the same thing except after a couple of chapters in I stopped reading the book. But if I remember correctly the book and film do have different things and the book goes into a little bit more detail on some things. I recall the books goes into more detail about why the outpost was abandoned.

A bit of research reveals that the writer wrote the novel and the screenplay. And as a sidenote I apparently still recall a scene from Michael Blake's only other screenplay to become a major motion picture. Costner was in that film as well back in the early 1980's and it was about a housewife who takes up card counting and ends up cleaning out a crooked casino.

The best living PI writer, I think, is Walter Mosley. I had fallen way behind but recently picked up his Easy Rawlins novels again, and they are terrific.

You probably know the classics (Hammett, Chandler) but among them I especially like Ross Macdonald.

Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch novels are rogue-cop stories (though I think Harry has recently become a PI, which he’s acted like all along). In the rogue-cop vein you might like Ian Rankin’s Rebus novels.

I cannot believe you ####### cowards let Clapper push you out of the OTP thread. You should all be ashamed, sheeple.

This is kind of the opposite of the Brer Rabbit or Tom Sawyer fence painting story, where someone is tricked into doing something they shouldn't want to do by the perp. Here the perp is bringing untold joy and peace of mind in what he is enforcing. Though he doesn't mean to.

I cannot believe you ####### cowards let Clapper push you out of the OTP thread. You should all be ashamed, sheeple.

I've been wanting a thread like this forever. I don't even really like talking politics, I just like this site and community and unfortunately the baseball threads can be totally moribund, so I ended up in OT:P by default.

Last Good Kiss the first one I read, and it's a lot of fun. The Wrong Case is a good crime yarn too, but with more of a broken PI; it includes some of the best passages on drinking (as a way of life) that I've come across.

Speaking of Kacey Musgraves, for the alt-country fans here, also check out Ruston Kelly. I saw him as an opener for Amanda Shires about a year and a half ago, and he was very impressive. Just recently found out he's married to Kacey Musgraves as well. They might end up rivaling Shires-Isbell for Alt-Country Power Couple.

S02E01 of Westworld feels 'off'. Looks OK, performances are fine, but the writing appears to be deeply functional. Characters - especially Dolores - are just speechifying their intentions and backstory openly, and every other line feels like a fill-in-the-blank cliche. Plus some very odd story points such as Bernard's patch job and Maeve's tolerance of writer guy for no real reason.

Charitably, I'm assuming that episode 1 of many seasons of TV shows take a similar approach to lower newcomers into the world more gently. But if there isn't any subtlety at all in the writing (and season 1 was not overburdened with it either), then the mystery box-style plotting is going to go from frustrating to infuriating for me.

Season 1 looked great in 4K/HDR, though. That has really halted my habitual attention-switching; I've sat through several movies (all of which I'd seen before) and most of a TV season and barely looked away since we upgraded.

Forget all that. Archer is coming back this week! Apparently going to be a pre WWII take on Indiana Jones/possibly Magnum PI.

Just caught up last week. I suppose they're going to milk this coma thing for a while? It doesn't seem like a terrible idea as it seems like they made the shrewd decision a few seasons ago that they did about all the could do with the spy premise.

According to interviews the Archer production team isn't even bothering with the whole coma thing outside of the first ten seconds of the first episode where they say they don't care about that story line.

Adam Reed has very clearly grown tired of the shot story line and of casting about for fun tropes to get his talented ensemble involved in.

Now if only venture bros would get back ok TV all would be right with the world.

I'll check it out, he's been under my radar for some reason. Dark is OK, I liked the three Dan Simmons books and they were pretty stark. Lehane gets a little grim on content, but I'm ok with his style.

I dunno, the whole culture and mythology of hip-hop is going to permanently pass me by in this lifetime – it's like Japanese drama or Indian epic poetry or something like that, meaningful if you learn the codes but impenetrable otherwise.

I've been content to find the wordplay-heavy stuff and enjoy hip-hop purely on the basis of that, and the underlying beats. The connective tissue and cultural baggage is fascinating, but I can't derive it from the tracks themselves, only from the analysis. Whereas I've been happily nodding along to Doomtree, Jurassic 5, and so on (if they can even be said to be in the same genre). I'm utterly unable to describe music, but that turns out to be no impediment at all to enjoying it.

One of the big problems with Westworld is that it's REALLY hard to discuss without spoiler alerting the hell of things... the whole damn first season was one big spoiler alert.

So - I cannot post the below with a big SPOILER ALERT -

I'll just say that I like it, but I find its extensive, over-reliant use of non-chronological narrative getting awfully tired. It's not that I require my fiction to be always be strictly chronological; far from it - I just think that it's a device that should only be used sparingly. It's not sustainable - and gets annoying - eventually. The first episode of season 2 feels like they're still going to that well. Once you give up the game, as they eventually did with the last few eps of season 1 - then get on with the damn story. It annoys me that now - based on s2e1 - even though I'm now versed in the device from season 1, I now have to watch every scene with this suspicion about what's occurring simultaneously (more or less) and spend too much time looking for clues that X was 30 years ago or whatever.

As for TWD - I thought it was OK up until about season 4... I pretty much stopped watching after the start of 5 (I think I quit around the time they got to Alexandria). It just got repetitive.

Is the season-end payoff worth the slog? I'll try again if it is really good.

How far did you you get?

I'd say that there are two big "reveals" in the last few episodes (if that doesn't ring a bell, then I suspect you dropped out before either of them). I binged the first season in three chunks - so at least in the manner I watched, I'd say they were worth it at the time. I had a very vague suspicion about the first, but I'll admit the second, bigger one completely eluded me until "Oh wow, that means...."

If I had actually invested 10 weeks and watched week to week? Not sure... That's my beef with the narrative device - it's the sort of thing that I think works well in a (relatively) confined piece... but spread out?

I'm watching week-to-week - well, at least, watched the first episode of s2 and will watch the second as it airs - and if the same is going to carry forward, I think it's going to annoy me.

Over the weekend our Uverse box went haywire, and I've lost all of my DVR's. Not a *lot* there that I'm going to miss (honestly, I wasn't going to dig through four back seasons of Lucifer), but dropping the first three new eps of Legion S2 is hurting man.

The Sonics released albums in 1965, 1966, 1967, 1980 and 2015... and the one from 2015 is really good!

To tack onto previous posts: I also passively bailed on "Westworld" S1: not so much a rejection as something I realized I'd abandoned. Kendrick Lamar does almost nothing for me, though I liked "King Kunta." Was left so cold by "Les Miserables" that I was literally startled by sniffling and weeping in the audience from something that was obviously supposed to be powerfully emotional-- and I needed to decipher WHAT it had been; forget about actually being affected by it. And I've enjoyed a total of two Wes Anderson films: "Rushmore" and "Moonrise Kingdom," both very much. The other four I've watched seem like exercises in paper doll cutting.

I won't copy much text in, as someone worked hard to write this, and it'll only take a minute or two to read it, I promise.

I'm fascinated by the concept of luxury goods. As one who is wealthy enough to have some exposure to them, but not wealthy enough to run the full gamut, I'm interested in what different people get out of their excess cash. For example, I only wear tailored suits...now,I only ever have one suit at a time (Have I ever mentioned I'm from the Omineca?) so it's easily enough done. I feel like a million bucks when I'm wearing my tailored suit, so I'm not keen to knock the women of purseblog, I know that feeling. One designer purse can cost more than my suit though, the women who are choosing to spend their money in this way are making different value judgements from me.

Booze is another one. Expensive booze is almost always good booze (well, except maybe Scotch...it's ridiculously expensive ). When Premium Spirit Day (Yes, comrade. That's what we call it) comes to town, I'm always there. Now that I drink less than I used to, I can't say I need any, I've got a big honkin' (technical fine spirits term there, "honkin'") cupboard full of fine liquor that's builds up faster than I drink it.

After my one good suit and my fancy booze though, I'm Mr. Low Budget.

Cheap is small and not too steep
But best of all cheap is cheap
Circumstance has forced my hand
To be a cut price person in a low budget land
Times are hard but we'll all survive
I just got to learn to economize

I'm on a low budget
I'm on a low budget
I'm not cheap, you understand
I'm just a cut price person in a low budget land
Excuse my shoes they don't quite fit
They're a special offer and they hurt me a bit
Even my trousers are giving me pain
They were reduced in a sale so I shouldn't complain
They squeeze me so tight so I can't take no more
They're size 28 but I take 34

I'm on a low budget
What did you say
I'm on a low budget
I thought you said that

I'm on a low budget
I'm a cut price person in a low budget land

I'm shopping at Woolworth and low discount stores
I'm dropping my standards so that I can buy more

[Quality costs, but quality wastes,
So I'm giving up all of my expensive tastes.
Caviar and champagne are definite no's,
I'm acquiring a taste for brown ale and cod roes ]

Low budget sure keeps me on my toes
I count every penny and I watch where it goes
We're all on our uppers we're all going skint
I used to smoke cigars but now I suck polo mints

I'm on a low budget
What did you say
Yea I'm on a low budget
I thought you said that
I'm on a low budget
I'm a cut price person in a low budget land
I'm on a low budget
Low budget
Low budget

Art takes time, time is money
Money's scarce and that ain't funny
Millionaires are things of the past
We're in a low budget film where nothing can last
Money's rare there's none to be found
So don't think I'm tight if I don't buy a round

I'm on a low budget
What did you say
Yes I'm on a low budget
I thought you said that
I'm on a low budget
I'm a cut price person in a low budget land
I'm on a low budget
Say it again
Low budget
One more time
Low budget

[I look like a tramp, but don't write me off,
I'll have you all know, I was once a tough
At least my hair is all mine, my teeth are my own,
But everything else is on permanent loan.
Once all my clothes were made by hand,
Now I'm a cut price person in a low budget land.
I'm on a low budget
I'll have you all know
We're on a low budget
I'm on a low budget]

Just in case nobody wants to take the plunge and read Ms. Wu's article, here's an excerpt...

Looking like your luck had turned was important enough to bend the rules. Couldn’t afford the real-deal Gucci print? If a stand at the local swap meet hawked $50 handbags that almost looked like the real thing, then what was the harm? Upside-down LV logos were sometimes present, if you looked hard. Coach Cs came in a variety of colors. Some of my aunties justified this as a placeholder, a way to know if the bag looked good on your arm before buying it. Others saw it as a fast-track way to create this image of success through conspicuous consumption. It all factored into building a certain aesthetic as a successful Asian woman. My friends and I constantly poked fun at how our moms looked when they were flush with designer goods, real and counterfeit alike. We found it tacky to wear a brand on your arm like an advertisement, but to them and many others, these physical manifestations of milestones they’d worked hard to achieve were beautiful.

Those who bought the real deal knew that they were getting their money’s worth. Paying a higher price for a handbag is also tied to frugality, a virtue extolled by Confucianism. The point of buying a pricier purse is to get something higher quality. Real leather doesn’t flake or crease as easily as pleather does. The thick texture of saffiano leather or tighter weaves won’t be as scuff-prone as cheaper fabrics may be. The bags will keep their shapes for longer; minute details like thoughtful stitching and metal feet for boxy handbags contribute greatly to that longevity.

With this outlook, if a $350 day-to-day handbag would last longer than the $50 one from the TJ Maxx down the street, it’s a no-brainer. Even designer outlet options offered higher quality than one would find on a typical mall brand rack, in the eyes of many Asian aunties. The colors and styles can be hit-or-miss, but I respect that quest for something that will last. It’s another way of looking toward the future.

I'm not buying the bolded bit. Designer bags can cost a lot more than $350, and no, trying to spin the conspicuous consumption into a kind of Confucianist frugality isn't going to fly...

In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.

Was left so cold by "Les Miserables" that I was literally startled by sniffling and weeping in the audience from something that was obviously supposed to be powerfully emotional-- and I needed to decipher WHAT it had been; forget about actually being affected by it

I like Les Misèrables as a stage show; it's got some big production numbers and some belt-'em-out tunes. It's too long, and aside from "Master of the House," the comic-relief number, the songs all sound the same, but what the heck.

As a film, it was pretty awful. Case in point, Anne Hathaway singing "I Dreamed a Dream." This is not a great song (it very much sounds like every Andrew-Lloyd-Webber song ever). But on stage, a singer can sell it with sheer volume. Well, Hathaway is not much of a singer, so they played it as a quiet, intimate number in extreme closeup, so that she could emote the dickens out of it. And my Gosh was she embarrassing. And ended up winning an Academy Award.

There are good things about Royal Tenenbaums, of course. But so much of it comes off as "What if Salinger's Glass family were Colorforms?"

I respect Anderson's work enough to have seen six of his movies; but I'm put off enough by the all-consuming style to really only care about two of them.

I don't think I could intelligently articulate why it is that those two films DON'T trigger my "preternatural teen writes impeccably calligraphed diary entry in their symmetrical green room while a less obvious Left Banke song plays" alarm system.